Page 178 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

preparation, there is nothing like that feeling of icy reality that hi ts whe n the
opening bell is near.

At the weigh station reality sunk in one step deeper when we saw Che n Ze-
Cheng and his team—the dominant school in the world. He was the guy who
had beaten me two years earlier and who m I had been pr eparing for all thi s
time. I walked over and said hello, and Chen told me that he was compe ting

under 75 kilos (165.3 pounds), the weight division below me. I was sho cke d. I
had spent two years dreaming about this great fighter, strategizing agai nst his
sinuous cat-quick game; in my mind, winni ng the world champi ons hi p ha d
meant defeating Chen Ze-Cheng. But then he po int ed toward thei r guy in my

division and I took a deep breath. They called him Buf falo and he looke d like
pure power. In Taiwan he was cons ider ed unbeat able. He’d been gr oomed to
become a world champion since he was a young boy. He was a little sho rter
than me and much thicker. He weighed in at 79.96 ki los (176.3 po unds ). I

weighed in at 78.16. He was four pounds heavier than me and proba bl y cut
fifteen pounds to make weight. T he g uy was a daunt ing phy sical spe cimen.
After the weigh-in, my team and I went and checked out the Moving Step
ring. I felt the traction of the mats, then moved around a little. Immedi ately

alarm bells were going off—the ring seemed too small. Tour nam ent offi ials
had sent us rules and ring dimensions mont hs ago : a six-meter-di ameter circle.
We used their precise dimensions to set up our training mats for bo th Fi xed
and Moving. I had internalized the di mensions of the circle and kne w exactly

how it felt when my heel was a quarter inch from the edge. If you step over the
border in Moving Step you lose a po int , and in the flur ries of action the re is no
time to look down—ring sense is hugel y impo rtant. We measur ed and the
diameter was fifteen inches smaller than what they had sent us . Thi s was the

second dirty trick and the matches had n’t even beg un. So we had to adj us t.
Typical, b ut there was nothing to be g ained by get ting w orked up a bo ut it.
We walked to the hotel in the rain, ate a bi g meal, and came back at 10 A.M.
fueled for battle. The Fixed and Moving compet itions woul d be go ing on at the

same time. Two rings would be used for Moving Step, thr ee for Fi xed. Weight
divisions were every five kilos, with men and women compet ing sepa rately.
Over four thousand competitors from all over the world were milling around,
and the stadium was mobbed with fans, many of them chanting eupho ni cally

in languages I didn’t understand. It was a great, lilting, hypno tic sound. Acres